1 Thessalonians 5:12-15 Growing in Community

to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak takes us through his series,

Hope Rising, from the book of 1 Thessalonians. Let's listen in. Well, good morning,

Recast Church. Good morning, everybody. I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, and I'd like to start off our time together by welcoming you all here to this gathering of God's people here in Matawan, Michigan at Recast Church.

The beautiful thing is that we're a variety of people coming from a variety of settings, a bunch of different experiences that you've had this week, a variety of backgrounds that you've had throughout your life, but we gather together for what is one common purpose.

I hope it's a part of the reason that you're here, and that is to grow together, to grow together.

I hope that that's part of the reason that you are sitting in a seat right now, listening to me, is that we would all desire to gather together and grow.

At Recast Church, we define maturity a little bit different. I think that a lot of times we think of maturity as a line that is crossed, a place that you arrive, and now

I am mature, and you get to sit back and relax and rest in your maturity. We like to define maturity as a commitment to an ongoing process of growth in your life, that regardless of how old you are, how many years you've walked with Christ, or how few years you've walked with Christ, or whether you're even just here learning things for the first time and checking things out, that there is growth to be had in all of us, and we believe that that process is defined by three simple things, growing in faith,

I say simple to communicate, but not necessarily simple to do, but growing in faith, growing in community, and growing in service, and we believe that in order to be who

God wants us to be as parts of the church, we need to have our feet set on a journey that is a process of lifelong growth in trusting

God, that is growing in faith, in living together, that is growing in community, and in serving one another, using the gifts and abilities that God has given us to serve others outside of ourselves, and particularly within the church.

And the start of all of that journey is simply to kind of explain that here at the start of this service, is trust in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for each one of us on the cross, where he bore our sins away, he took away the affront that we had given to God in the behaviors that we do, but also in the attitudes that we have, and the way that we process things, and the way that we think about things, everything about us to some degree is broken or flawed in a variety of ways, we don't even match our own standards, let alone the standard that others might impress on us, and so a lot of times we break our own rules, and we do things that we don't wanna do, and so he died on the cross to bear our sins away, and at the cross he received the punishment that we deserved and we are told that anyone who trusts in him will be born again to a new life, and not a new life alone, it's very important because I think in the church and down through the ages we can catch a wrong thought, a thought that to be brought into the faith is an isolated solo thing, and we might ask about your personal testimony of salvation, and that's fundamentally true, nobody is brought in because they're a part of a church, you don't get to be saved and get to heaven because you attend a church, but the reality is when you are saved you are not saved to an isolated journey alone, praise

God, anybody glad for that? But you are brought into a family, into a community that is here to support and to love and to encourage and to challenge and to even bring rebuke when we go astray, part of the reason that I wanna be a member of a local church is because I know my own frailty,

I know my own propensity to wander away and I need others in my life to call me back when

I begin to wander and when I begin to go astray from God's will for me, that's part of it, part of it is to have somebody to celebrate with when things are going well too, like we do celebration, and as a church we should do celebration well, and we should do sorrow well, and we should do everything in between while in community together, we are not saved alone to a life of solitary, slugging it out, and if you're here this morning and you feel alone, then let me just encourage you to take advantage of some of the things as we are gonna go through this sermon and talk about community, to take advantage of some of the things that are there for relationships, and maybe you're here and you're introverted, and you're like have a hard time with even identifying that you need those relationships and you do fundamentally, and maybe just the encouragement that during the connection time here in a few minutes, you would actually get up and not introduce yourself to everybody in the room because that's not gonna be your style, but maybe pick one person and go chat with them, go talk with them, go engage in the foundation and the starting point of a relationship is introduction, right, that's the starting place for something that could eventually turn into a better relationship where you can,

I would discourage you from starting off with rebuke, right, like when you don't know somebody, like that would be a bad starting point, but eventually, how many of you know that it would take you a little while to get to the point where you would call something out that you see in somebody's life, you'd have to have a little bit more of a fundamental foundational relationship with somebody like that, anybody in agreement with me on that?

So yeah, you need that, but a major part of new life in Christ is growing deeper into relationships within the community of Christ followers, and this morning

I've entitled this sermon straight up, growing in community, because that's what I believe Paul had in mind when he wrote this section of scripture to us.

Paul is going to address the responsibility of the church to live well together, to live in health in relationships to one another, and this is much easier said than done.

Have you identified that in your relationships with people that might, I mean, just thinking in terms of those of you in the room that are married, those of you that have friends, those of you that are maybe still living with parents at home, or those of you that have children, how many of you know relationships might be some of the hardest things that you deal with on a day in and day out basis, you know?

I mean, you know, difficulties in relationships are much more difficult to overcome than say your car won't start, right?

I mean, your car, that's inconvenient, right, when your car won't start, but I mean, you know, there's a fairly reasonable solution to that.

There are guys called mechanics who can fix that, or those of you that are more handy might be able to solve that yourself, but relationships can be an ongoing hardship in our lives, but as we dig into this text,

I believe that God has for each one of us in this text conviction, encouragement, and correction.

He has those three things available for us every time we open his word. There is at least one of those that's gonna come to bear in our lives, either encouragement, hey, here's something that God is saying, and I think it's going pretty well, and I'd encourage you to check that with others in your lives.

If you think you're handling, if you think you're nailing something, it might be good to check with somebody who knows you and confirm that you're nailing it, right?

Because sometimes anybody ever overconfident about something like that? So yeah, sometimes it's like, I need others to let me know that that's going well.

Some of us, it's gonna hit us as encouragement, but some of us are gonna be rebuked or corrected by this.

You're not engaging in relationships as God would desire. You're not loving others as he wants, and so we all need that for our role in the community of God here at Recast.

So let's open our Bibles to 1 Thessalonians 5, 12 through 15 if you're not already there, or just go ahead and navigate in your device over there, your app or whatever, and Mike has some

Bibles here, and they are already open to this passage, and if you don't have a Bible in front of you, he would love to bring you a copy of God's word.

Just slip your hand up, and he'll bring you a copy of God's word, but we want everybody to have a Bible that they can follow along and see.

The things that I'm reading are coming from God's word to us. They're not me making this stuff up as I go.

That would be really bad. So 1 Thessalonians 5, 12 through 15, and again,

Recast, as I often say, this is God's word. God is going to speak as I read this, not my voice, but his voice speaking to us through the text of his word.

Again, 1 Thessalonians 5, 12 through 15. We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the

Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work.

Be at peace among yourselves, and we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the faint -hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.

See that no one repays anyone, evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the word of God that has the power to convict and to, in a sense, forge community and to actually be the foundations of what this church is built on.

Father, we're gathered together to hear from your word. We're gathered together to hear from you and to know how we ought to live and what you have done for us and who we actually are and who you are.

And Father, I pray that those things would be revealed to us through your word and through the conviction of your spirit this morning.

Father, I rejoice in the opportunity we have right now to sing some songs to you, and I pray that it would turn into so much more than just an exercise of our vocal chords, of singing together, but it would be a rejoicing and a recognizing how awesome and glorious and worthy and majestic you truly are, and to come before you in humility and deep thanks for the cross and the sacrifice that's been given for us.

Father, I pray that you would be glorified in this time of singing together, that we will do now what we can't do alone, and that is to praise you together in community.

And I thank you for this opportunity in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thanks a lot to Dave and the band for leading us.

I'm grateful for them. And be sure at some point to express your thanks and your gratitude for, that's gonna be right in my eye for about five minutes there.

Might just, Dan, if you'd just shut that door on that side. Somebody's windshield is, it's got the sun right there.

Perfect. That was Dave. So thanks, canceled.

Sorry, just kidding, just kidding. Oh, you guys were listening to that, sorry.

Remember that if you need any more coffee, juice, or donuts, you can take advantage of that and get as comfortable as possible.

I recognize it's really hot in here and you might need to get up and stand by the door or whatever, and hopefully not everybody's huddled around the door, because then that would get creepy and also very hot.

But whatever it takes to keep your focus on God's word over the next half an hour or so is the point.

And part of that is keeping your Bibles open to 1 Thessalonians 5, 12 through 15. I recognize that in the shuffle, you may have lost your place.

So I say that every time we come back together, 1 Thessalonians 5, 12 through 15, so you can see that the things that I'm saying are coming from the text of scripture there.

And that really is our focus. Even this short text that we're looking at this morning outlines into three pretty simple points that all pertain to the community life of the church.

So I've got three points here. Again, I don't do a whole lot of three -point sermons, but it seems like the text of the letters have a lot more propositional, point -by -point truth in them, and they lend themselves to this kind of outlining.

And so when you're preaching through or when you're learning through the narrative portions of scripture, it's not as easy to outline, but these come at us in the way that I'm trying to take and understand

Paul's line of thinking and then bring that into us, into our modern times. And so that's what's going on when

I see these three points. Remember that Paul is writing this to a specific young church in a

Greek town called Thessalonica. That's where that funny name Thessalonians comes from, is from the name of that city.

It's still a current modern -day Greek town. Today it's pronounced differently. It's Thessaloniki, ends with an

I now, but I don't know why the Greek language shifted that, but Thessalonica is what it was called in ancient times.

But he's writing to us to give us a better glimpse of the inner workings of a church.

And we are here this morning, hopefully, to receive instructions on how we should act as a community based on this teaching.

And so that's gonna be fundamental. So the first point is that Paul addresses community and leadership.

Community and leadership is point number one, and that's in verses 12 through 13. If you're taking notes, you'll see these two verses tying in that concept of how does the community and leadership relate to one another.

The way that leaders respond to the church and the way that the church responds to leaders is of necessity an important aspect to the community life of a church.

And I think some of you have experienced the ins and outs of leadership going bad or the congregation going bad or whatever, and vice versa, and relationships getting sundered between leadership and the church.

And so you can understand why Paul, hopefully you can understand why Paul would be addressing that. The second point is gonna be that Paul will address the community life of the church toward each other.

What is the internal relationship from congregation to congregation, from person to person within the congregation, how does that work?

The way that the church functions as a community toward one another is fundamental to the health of a church.

The way that relationships are forged and the way that we care for one another, and we'll see exactly what those specific instructions are.

And then the third, lastly, Paul addresses how the community is to respond to those primarily outside, really he says to everyone, but particularly with a focus on those who are doing evil and would even be seeking to destroy the church.

Well, what is our relationship like to people who would persecute us, and particularly, obviously in Thessalonica where they were undergoing significant persecution in their context that mattered all the more.

For us, I still think it matters in the sense that our persecution might look different, but knowing the way that things can go, culture to culture and the way that things slide, we may actually eventually be looking at a need to apply this in a very literal way in the way that we as a church would respond to persecution.

But let's jump, let's launch out into verses 12 through 13 on community and leadership. I wanna point out it's funny, it's a funny text to preach as a pastor, okay?

And I don't do very well as a person, and my wife could attest to this, as a person who doesn't address the elephant in the room.

I'm usually kind of a tackle it head on kind of person. I don't like to tiptoe through the tulips, and so to tackle this head on,

Paul begins by asking the Thessalonians to respect those who are defined by three categories.

They are called to respect those who labor among the congregation. They are called to respect and esteem those who are over the congregation in the

Lord, and they are called to esteem and respect those who admonish you. And really it's three things that define one class of people and it's very clear in verses 12 through 13 that Paul is referring to the way that the leadership should respond toward its leadership.

And the thing that makes this an elephant in the room is the reality that I as a leader in this church am preaching this morning to all of you to respect me.

Anybody a little uncomfortable with that? Okay, that's what the text is doing here, and it's like, oh, that's the elephant in the room, so let's get that out on the table and talk about that.

You may be happy to know that this is not a comfortable position for me to be in. I can imagine though, and I wanna be clear and transparent with you,

I can imagine within the sinfulness of my own heart the ability for me to stand up here and preach this with my own force, with my own feelings of self -importance or even an air of entitlement in this text.

But as we dissect this first point about the way that leaders and the church work together in community,

I hope that you can clearly see what I observed this week as I studied this and poured over it and thought about my role in this and the congregation's role this is an extremely important teaching for the life and health of a local church.

It is foundational and fundamental, as awkward as it may be, and as much as I think pastors might push this aside and go, huh, this text, somebody else can talk about that, we'll have a guest speaker come in and talk about that or we'll just skip it all together.

If we were going through a sermon series on my top 10 passages, this isn't gonna show up.

If we just preached what really spoke to my heart, this isn't one that I'm gonna be like, hey, let's go to this sermon series on respecting your pastor.

How many of you think that might be kind of awkward and kind of a red flag anyways? If a pastor's doing a sermon series on respect myself, that's kind of rough, and that might be a sign that you're in the wrong place if your pastor is doing that.

Not a one -off sermon like this where he's going through First Thessalonians, that would be a sign that you're in the right church, of course, but no, obviously it's a little bit awkward and it's kind of like the elephant in the room and it is something that's worth identifying.

But I hope that you see that as we walk through this first point that it is fundamental, it is extremely important, and maybe some of you have lived it.

Maybe some of you have seen that breakdown to such a degree in such a way that you recognize how ugly it is when leadership and the congregation are not working well together.

And that can be the very source of some of the most divisive things that many of us could face in our lives.

Some of you are in this room, and I know you can point to that being a significant low point in your life when you went through a church split, you went through an issue where you didn't really know if the pastor should stay or go and it didn't end well and things like that, and so it's fundamental.

But I wanna first consider the definition of the role of leader in the church that's given here, and that's the conviction to me.

That's my part in this. That's where God is speaking to me and correcting me and making sure that I'm thinking about these things right.

First, the definition of leadership in the church is those who labor among you, those who are working hard to serve the congregation.

There's labor, that word is, there's all different kinds of Greek words that can be used for work, and this is the hard one.

This is toil, this is effort expended, this is going to bed exhausted and tired is the image that you have here.

Now Paul isn't just merely identifying, by the way, a paid pastor. He's not saying there's one leader in your church, there's one who is serving you and you're supposed to esteem him.

He's not even strictly only identifying elders here, although he's gonna eventually talk about them admonishing you, they're the ones who are teaching and are guiding and directing and they are serving over you in the

Lord, and so there's some of that that's going on there, but there are many who labor within the church, right?

You know that? There's many who serve to allow us to have chairs to sit in and to worship

God here and to lead in worship and to practice and all of the stuff that goes into that. There are those who arrive early here at Recast and stay late and have done so for years.

There are those who have moved literally tons. I'm sure if you measured the weight of these chairs and then considered how many times they've been picked up and sat down and picked up and sat down, there's been literally tons of heavy lifting that has been done in this church in the three years that we have been here.

But further, I would suggest to you that there's something that's always behind the scenes and I think we know it in our hearts. There's an emotional labor that comes in preparing lessons, preparing sermons, grieving with those who are mourning, bringing rebuke to those who are practicing evil and even just generally making high -level decisions that are stressful that affect the future of this church and the direction that we're going and the entire body of believers.

I personally can testify and I think probably many in this room can relate to this illustration, but I have worked many different jobs since I was 12 years old.

I started detasseling corn when I was 12 in the summers and then I have had some level or some type of employment pretty consistently since then and some of those jobs have been more physically demanding than others.

How many of you have worked a job that was pretty physically demanding? I know a lot of us in this room, at least some point in our history, maybe you're currently doing that.

And I would identify that all of our work, all of our work is cursed with some level of toil, right?

Regardless of whether you push a pen in crunch numbers, whether you're designing stuff with CAD, whether you're working at a computer, whether you're in sales, whatever, there's some level of brokenness that you have to overcome every single day in your job.

Anybody testify to that? Are you a stay -at -home mom? Well, a lot of things that you have to overcome in that.

I had four hands raised, you guys. Are you seriously that sleepy this morning? I mean, how many of you have recognized that there's a part of your job that is toil?

Okay, 17 of you now. Okay, excellent. Some of you are like, I'm not playing that game,

Don. I'm way past that. I don't raise my hand anymore. I'm not doing that, so whatever. All right, but yeah, it's toil.

There's work that's involved in all kinds and in those, I've wrapped up some days with physical tiredness.

Some of you can identify with that. You wrap up a day and you're just ready to put your head on your pillow and you're physically tired.

Like the next day, you're sore and you get up and you have to do it again anyways and there's a physicalness to that.

I worked for Gordon's Food Service. When Lynn and I were first married, we knew that I was gonna be a temporary job, so I kind of picked up a position that was kind of short -lived and I knew

I wasn't gonna be there long and I unloaded semis by hand at Gordon's Food Service, 50 -pound bags of onions all day long.

Do you know what you smell like when you're unloading 50 -pound bags of onions and re -palatizing them in different order so that they could fit in the

Gordon's Food Service system up there off of 44th Street? So it was hard work and it was just constant, unending labor when the one truck got unloaded, guess what pulled in?

Another truck all day long, eight hours. So it was like hard work, but I've also wrapped up some nights with emotional tiredness.

Any of you relate to that? Do you know what I'm talking about? There's an emotional level of tiredness and I think that sometimes people in various jobs can kind of get at each other.

That's not work. That's not work. I mean, come on. It's not like delivering packages or it's not like teaching kids, you know, or whatever, name whatever you do and you can probably think of somebody who doesn't work as hard as you, right?

That can't be work, but I'm not sure that I can identify which night I was more tired, with the emotional exhaustion of doing a funeral or with the physical exhaustion of unloading a semi.

I can't really tell you which one of those is worse. I can just tell you it's crash into bed at the end of those two scenarios.

And so there's different types of labor and I wanna be clear about that. I wanna make sure that we all understand that we respect each other and the different roles that God has given us to play and recognize that there's different kinds of work and it all has a semblance of toil to it.

And ministry ought to be labor for those who are called out to serve the local church.

It should be labor. They should work hard at it. The second modifier in this text to define the leadership is that they are over you in the

Lord. Very important and fundamental to all of the study that I did on this this week is that this is not an issue of importance.

It is not that the leadership is over you as in hierarchy, as in more important than the congregation.

There is nobody in this church that is more important than the other. We are all created in the image of God loved, he died for us.

But they've been placed in a position of watchful care over you. There is a board of elders here who is put in a position of watchful care over this flock.

It is to be serviced like a shepherd, not like a tyrant. And notice that leadership is over the flock and this is fundamental to your understanding.

If you don't get anything else about this point, get this. It is over the flock in the

Lord. One of the most terrifying and disgusting things is when a pastor claiming to be serving the flock, claiming to serve the flock in the

Lord, abuses the sheep for his own ego. When he's really serving the flock in himself.

When a shepherd uses the sheep so that he can feel powerful or so that he can make a name for himself or so that he can obtain financial gain.

That's a terrifying and an ugly thing. When I, as a church leader, by the way, hear the phrase over you in the

Lord, I don't rejoice in the over you. I tremble at the in the

Lord. I tremble at the in the Lord. I am indeed called here to lead.

I believe that that calling is important. I also believe that God has equipped me for this task. I've seen it over and over again and to his glory and to his honor alone that he has called me to this place for this time.

But I take seriously that my position in this church is first and foremost a calling in the

Lord. He is my boss, he is my chief, he is my shepherd and the one to whom

I will give an account for the way that I have led a flock that is just merely his on loan.

I am just merely a steward of the authority and calling that he has placed here.

Recast is God's church. It belongs to Jesus Christ. And anything that I'm ever over is only in the

Lord. The last modifier for these leaders is that they are the ones who admonish you.

Talking about the leaders who admonish you. That's what I'm up here doing right now. I'm admonishing you.

My goal every Sunday morning is that I will seek to impart to you the truth of God's word by first letting it impact my heart.

By first asking God's spirit from Monday through Saturday convict me, break me over your text.

Let this, I don't ever wanna get up here and preach something to you that hasn't first hit me.

I plead and I pray and I ask God, please let this get in here and into here before it ever comes out here.

I think that's very, very important too. The idea and the concept of admonishing.

The leadership that Paul has in mind here, think about it, are those who serve the flock laboring.

Those who in the Lord exercise authority and at the same time they are teachers who bring the truth with authority.

And so within a healthy church, community leaders will exhibit that hard work. They will labor, they will only exercise authority in the

Lord, which I think involves at the bare minimum the reminder that they are accountable to him for their leadership.

And then further, they will admonish the church with truth from God's word. Admonishing is a strong word.

In English even, but in the Greek it is there too. It's a strong, strong teaching that goes beyond just asking the questions.

I'm not up here to ask the questions. I'm up here to explain God's word and to hope to provide you with some answers.

But there's a lot of preaching today that just amounts to just kinda asking the questions, get your thoughts kinda stirred up and get you thinking about this or that or whatever, but acting like there's no answers.

And I'd caution you against that. Not that I'm the only preacher you can listen to, not that it's just my teaching or even just my style.

There's all kinds of styles of preaching and types of preaching, but go where someone is explaining

God's word. If God moves you on from here, if this isn't the right fit for you, I've even helped people.

I don't know if you guys realize this, but I've said this to people. Very few will take me up on it because they think it's awkward, but it's more awkward for them than it is for me.

But if Recast isn't the place for you, if you're attending here and you've only been here a few weeks and you're like,

I don't know, we're checking other things out, we're trying to figure out, I've helped other people find a church that's a good fit for them.

You let me know what you're looking for. I know a lot of other pastors. I know a lot of the other churches in this community that, I mean, we want you here and we wanna connect in community with each other and we want this to continue to grow in Christ, grow deeper, to grow wider in our influence, that is for the gospel of Christ.

But there's a reality that if this isn't the right fit, I would help you to go find a church where they're still teaching with authority the truth of God's word.

Because I'm telling you what, you could stumble on a lot of churches that aren't. You can easily stumble along a lot of churches that are kind of just preaching good thoughts and kind of a little bit of pop psychology in there and different things.

Again, that's a little far afield. And that wasn't in my notes. And if anybody's offended by anything I just said, I realize that I can,

I like the way that we do things at Recast. We started this church with a group of people and I don't think this is the only thing that God has going.

I wanna make sure that that's abundantly clear. But man, do I think that teaching from the authority of God's word is the only reason

I can stand up here and be admonishing you right now. That's the only thing I have to admonish.

Admonishment is more than just life coach type suggesting.

Admonishing is a full body robust teaching that brings with it true authority. Not authority from the speaker.

This isn't my authority. How could I ever stand up here and tell you to respect and esteem me and the elders here at this church?

How could I ever in my own strength admonish you to do that? I think that would be a terrible thing to do.

But I'm not standing up here on my own authority. I'm standing up here teaching the word of God.

And by the way, not even standing up here on authority that you've loaned me. I recognize that there's some degree of that.

By showing up, you've shown me some respect and you've shown me some esteem and there's some sense, unless you're just here for the worship and you really love

Dave and you're like, I would put up with Don for a little bit if we could just get that worship, get that going. I don't know. Or maybe it's just a relationship is the only, maybe you're just hanging on by a thread and it's like, well,

I've got a friend over here, so I'll keep going to church. I don't know. But that was supposed to be funny and apparently it wasn't because a lot of you are there.

A lot of you are there. So it's like, that's a little too close to home, Don. Just barely hanging on by a thread. I don't know.

Maybe this temperature is why you're barely hanging on by a thread. I don't know. But I'm not standing up here on my authority.

I am standing up here with a focus on communicating the very word of God. That's my hope and my point.

And he's telling us in this first point this morning in verses 12 to 13, that our church will be more healthy.

It will be a more healthy community if I am the right kind of leader. And if you respect and esteem the work that is done among you.

And I think it's very important to note that in verse 13, we are called to esteem leaders. It says right in the text, because of their work.

It is not a blanket respect for the position. It is not saying that just because somebody holds the title of elder, just because someone holds the title of pastor, that you must respect everything that they do.

Respect them because of their work. But if a leader is laboring among you, if they are exercising authority only in the

Lord, and if they are admonishing you from the word, then respect and esteem them.

I mentioned if I was just picking my favorite passages, you would never hear a sermon about this. But I think that God wants us to hear a sermon about this.

Honestly, take a moment and consider why this is here. Is it to make pastors uncomfortable? Is that why it's here?

I believe it's here because it's Community Church Health 101. I think it's fundamental to the health of a church.

How many of you in the room might testify that you have watched a leader slide into abusing their power?

Any of you seen that? You've observed that? That's a tough thing. How many of you watched a church slide into disrespect and demeaning and maybe even running out a pastor?

Some of you seen that too, yeah. What seems so basic and obvious in this passage, which we might go, why even write it,

Paul? That just kind of makes sense to us. Of course, we get it. It's not very easy to apply in community.

Can be really tough when relationships get going. But God wanted me to hear this this morning, and he wanted all of us to hear this this morning so that for me, so that I'll be challenged to be a leader worthy of respect and esteem, in that I labor hard and that I recognize my accountability is in Christ and that I admonish you well.

And he wants you to give respect and esteem if you see those things. I think it's important that I say that I have felt loved and respected by Recast Church.

Aside from the occasional jokes about only working for an hour on Sunday morning, which, you know, other than that, this is a good feeling in the relationship here.

I hope that goes both ways. But notice that Paul wraps up his discussion about community and leadership with the command to be at peace among yourselves.

In context, this is not a generic statement, just okay, just in general. Here, let me wrap up with just kind of a shotgun approach.

Just be at peace. It's not that kind of a generic statement, but it's intended to wrap up this entire first point of the text.

Consider that when leaders lead well and when followers follow well, a beautiful peace is available to the church.

We live in a culture that is skeptical and maybe even a bit jaded about leadership, but Paul is telling the church that keeping a healthy relationship between leaders and followers is key to keeping peace at a church.

The second movement in this text is still addressing community. It's still on that same topic of the community of the church, and it focuses more on the general community life within the church as member to member, person to person.

Here, Paul uses a more firm request than he was just asking in verse 12.

Here, now in our text, he urges the church at large to three responses in verse 14, three different groups that are found within any church.

You're gonna find this three groups of people in any church, and since he uses the generic term brothers, which could easily be translated brothers and sisters to get the full picture, he is speaking to the entire church and has expectations that all of us share in these three areas of responsibility for caring for each other in the body, not just left up to the elders, not just left up to the leadership, not just left up to the children's workers or those who have an official volunteer position or the staff, but all of us.

They're not meant to be left up to the professionals, but to the idol, he says, to the idol.

And another way to translate that word, if you're looking, maybe you're looking at, I don't know which other translations, NIV, I think, might use unruly.

There's different translation. That's one Greek word that can be used either direction, and so in context, some have used idol because of the specific problems that we know we're in,

Thessalonica, but the word unruly could equally be applied there. It's people who think in terms of people who are not doing what they ought to be doing, one way or the other.

Either they're not working hard, or they are not, they're kind of off in left field doing their own thing and claiming to be followers of Christ, but to the idol, we are called, all of us, to admonish them.

There's that word again that involves bringing the word of God with authority to bear in the life of another. We are all called to some role of admonishing each other.

The idol or unruly, as some translate it, are those within the church that need correction. They need admonishment.

Now, how much do you need to be involved in someone's life before you feel comfortable suggesting that maybe they should get a job?

How close do you have to be with someone before you have that kind of conversation with them? You need to be pretty close.

You in agreement on that? How about, how close do you need to be to someone to suggest that that movie series, or that TV series, or that movie that they're sharing with you is probably not one that would be super healthy or very good?

Anybody really eager for that kind of conversation? Not super eager for those kind of conversations, are we?

There's a cultural thing there, right? And there's certainly, I don't have a, I've mentioned many times,

I don't have an approved movie list. We don't approve certain ratings. We don't go through and give you all, we don't boycott things here at Recast, but we do just encourage you to do what you do with the spirit of God, allowing him to convict you, not quenching his spirit, but allowing him and recognizing that there are things that literally are not sin that are not beneficial to you, right?

A second piece of cake may or may not be sin for you, but is it beneficial? Is it helpful to you?

And you get anything from that that you didn't get from the first, you know? Maybe, I don't know.

Depends on the cake, right? Some of you are like, well, boy, that got really close to home for some of us.

It was like right there. But yeah, this is a very counter -cultural message here.

When you think about it, to be commanding a church, to admonish the idol implies a depth of relationship that, to be quite honest, is uncomfortable to many of us.

You have to be pretty close. It's very counter -cultural. Part of the reason it's so counter -cultural to us is that we have not, in some ways, honestly opened up our lives to one another.

We've walled off others from deeper connections with us. It's very comfortable to talk about the summer, the weather, the vacations, the jobs, the sporting events, the different things, the kids, the friendships, the relationships.

It's easier to talk on a very surface -y level, even sometimes pretending that we're going deeper. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Sometimes you can even just be faking the depth by talking about deeper things, like how are your kids doing, when you're really avoiding something that's a little bit more, to be honest, on your sleeve.

It's right there, but you're not gonna wear your heart on your sleeve, but it's the first. I mean, what's the first thing on your mind right now?

What is the most pressing issue on your mind? And are you sharing that with anybody? Is there anybody in your life that you're talking with about that struggle, that thing that is just on your mind and is kind of like just nagging on you, and you're very quick to talk about the weather.

You're very quick to talk about other things or to divert the conversation. We've tried to protect ourselves, certainly, and understandably, from critique and conviction, right?

And even when somebody goes out on a limb to provide that critique or correction, how do we respond?

It's not very easy to avoid defensiveness in that situation, right? How dare they suggest that I shouldn't watch that?

How dare they suggest that this or that or whatever, look at them anyways, and very easy to get caught up into that kind of stuff and not open our hearts to one another and not really be open to any type of conviction from anyone.

But the church is meant to be a place where we invite others in and listen when they seek to help us grow. How are we gonna grow if we're not open to others correcting and shaping and giving guidance and direction?

And by the way, I think that that correction should be along the lines of known sin. I mentioned movies and TVs and things like that, but going to somebody and telling them they should, you sinned, you shouldn't watch that.

Be very careful with something like that. I mean, if it's pornography, obviously, you probably have some good grounds to say don't do that, right?

Don't look at that, that's sin. But just be cautious about making your standard somebody else's standard, and I think we get into that whole, you know, we could open up a whole can of worms on that that I wanna be clear.

But man, when you're in relationship and you've got that foundation and you're actually doing community together, there's gotta be some room for us to talk through these things one -on -one, not in your community group.

Hey, I saw you, blah, blah, blah, you know? One -on -one is a good context for that kind of thing.

In a group, not so great, okay? Saw your car over at this, whatever. Yeah, probably not the best timing on something like that.

But the church is supposed to be a place where we invite others in. The second group is the faint -hearted. So the first group is the unruly or the idol, the second group that needs correction, the second is the faint -hearted that needs encouragement.

They need encouragement to press on. This is a group of people who are about to give up. They're right on the edge of giving up.

They've gone a little bit into relationship with Christ. They may have been a Christian for years and years, but they've gone into some hardship or some difficulty.

The faint -hearted are those who feel like giving up. Their faith is at a weak spot.

Maybe they're going through a dark valley, a loss of a job, a death in the family, a struggle with sin, or maybe even just a general season of doubt that's going on in their lives.

Notice that the call here, sometimes we get these flip -flopped, the call here is not to admonish the faint -hearted.

Sometimes the faint -hearted, the first thing that we wanna do is educate them. It's teaching them.

Oh, or it's just to give them a big vaccination of like, oh, here's what you need to do, and to teach them.

What does it say to do? Encourage them. Encourage is an interesting word.

When you think about it and you break it down, it means to infuse with courage. Encourage means to put courage in something.

In other words, to be the courage for the one who lacks it, to literally come alongside and to stand up with them when they can't stand to carry them, if you will, to let your faith be their faith for a period of time, and to come alongside and to bolster them, to infuse them when they have no courage with the courage that God has supplied you.

Have you ever noticed what a beautiful thing it is when a friend is on hard times and you're not, and you're at a point where you can come alongside and just encourage and just be there for them?

Have you ever been there? So it's a terrible thing when you both fall at the same time when you're both down, but God seems to me in my personal experience to be gracious to give me someone who's up when

I'm down. Do you know what I'm talking about? There's someone there in my life who can come alongside and be the encouragement and to be the courage that I need when my faith is failing or faltering or when

I'm feeling faint of heart. Be their legs when they cannot walk.

Be their courage when they are terrified. Infuse them with your faith when their faith is faltering.

As for the weak, the church is called to help them. Help the weak is the phrase that's there.

This is the tangible assistance the church should provide for a family that's just had surgery or the financial assistance given to those who are at a down point between jobs.

This is the technical help and genuine providing for those who are going through more physical hard times.

The community of church is to be a place of help for those who are weak.

The last thing regarding the internal community of the church is the call to be patient with all of them.

Be patient with the idle. Be patient with the unruly, whichever translation you have.

Be patient with the faint hearted. Be patient with the weak. Patient, patient, patient with all.

Anybody else struggle with that? Anybody else just struggle with that? Just being honest.

It's a hard thing to be patient with others. We live in a society of increasing instant demands, right?

Is it increasing that way? Do you feel that? Do you feel that in your heart? Do you feel that in yourself? Do you feel that in our culture?

Do you feel that in the way you drive? Do you feel that in the way that others are driving around you? Is everybody in a hurry to get somewhere?

Is there an increasing impatience? Is it quicker now when somebody lays on the horn if you don't move when the light turns green?

Is it going faster that way? Or are you the one who honks the horn when the person, that's me,

I'm sorry. I just have to be honest. I do that sometimes. We wait for our burger for three minutes in line and demand to talk to a manager.

You know what I'm talking about? I mean, you imagine that. We get stuck on a 4G network out in the country and you'd think the world was coming to an end.

Oh my goodness. How in the world is anybody on Facebook? How am I gonna check Facebook out here? Like how is this gonna happen?

The world is going on without me. People don't grow on our timeline.

They don't improve on our timeline. They never grow fast enough for us.

We want our kids to exhibit the maturity that we have in our 40s or 30s in their teens.

Expect them to be like us. We expect them to have had the life experience that they've never had before.

We expect them to just suddenly be mature and grown. Many churches expect conformity to strict standards of morality even for baby

Christians. And it's been a pleasure here at Recast to see people grow. There are some here who came to our gathering without a relationship with Jesus Christ.

And I've seen them grow, each at their own pace, but with the power of the Holy Spirit, and that's been a glorious thing to have a front row seat.

It's one of the privileges of ministry is to have the opportunity to see people grow in the

Spirit. In the church community, we are to admonish the idle, encourage the faint -hearted, and help the weak, and to do all of that with a spirit of patience, a spirit -driven patience that gives people the room to fall down and get back up and get back on the pathway.

And we wanna be a church like that, that gives people the room to grow at their own pace, to turn from their sin, to repent, and this ongoing cycle that God has us in of repenting and coming back to Him and turning to Christ for assistance and help and hope.

The last point is still about community, but it's possibly one of the hardest teachings in all of Scripture. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on it, in part because I would like to leave it up to isolated conversations, because everybody, when you read this, you want to know the exceptions.

There's so many questions about it. There's so many things that we could talk about here that I think get us too far afield from what the text is saying.

And so I'd rather get together with you for a cup of coffee or talk with you after the service or something about your specific scenario of what this text brings to your mind.

But let me just start off by saying, in the community of the church, we are to make sure that no one goes vigilante, that no one takes vengeance into their own hands.

Look at the text with me again, verse 15. I think you'll understand it.

Listen to what I say for understanding and just tell yourself in your mind, do you get what

Don just read? Do you understand it? See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always, always seek to do good to one another and to everyone.

Did you understand it? Did you get it? Do you understand what

God is telling us as a church? Do you have questions about it? Do you want exceptions to it?

Are you thinking of exceptions? Are you thinking that you're an exception to this? Are you thinking that God didn't know your circumstances when he wrote this?

He didn't understand what happened to you when you were a child in this. He didn't understand what happened to you last week.

He doesn't understand what your boss did. He doesn't understand how you've been betrayed.

Are you the exception to this? I think our hearts desperately want to see exceptions to this clause.

We want to see that there is a appropriate time to take vengeance. We kind of in our hearts want that to be true, don't we?

Part of it's just because we're American. Part of it is just that alone.

We are not to seek vengeance. We are not allowed to join the Avengers, regardless of what awesome superpower we may think that we possess.

I had to get the Avengers in here at some point, so there they are. And whatever superpower that you think you have, you don't get to join them.

I think my superpower has something to do with Sunday afternoon naps. I think that's kind of where I excel a little bit.

I'm just, I mean, not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty good at it. And I'm trying to figure out what would my, you guys can submit suggestions for the superhero costume of napping.

Maybe I'm called the napper, I don't know. But bad guys, you know, pose a threat, and I'm like, just a second.

I mean, I don't know. But you guys, if you have suggestions, and you can laugh, but you've got one too.

You've got something that you're super good at, just like me in naps. So you've got it there somewhere. But ironically, this final point is so cut and dried and clear that you understand it.

You get it. You understand what he's saying, and he's very emphatic about it. I get the words. See that no one repays anyone, but always good to everyone.

I mean, do you see the extremity in the words that are there? He's intentionally telling you that there's no exceptions.

That's why he didn't include them. So cut and dried.

And even if you want me to go into explanation of exceptions, I confess that I wanted some.

What about self -defense? Anybody's mind go there? What about self -defense? Further, what about the defense of the innocent?

What about the defense, innocent in quotes, because nobody is innocent. But what about the defense of those who are vulnerable and are incapable of defending themselves?

But this text, I wanna be clear, and I want you to look at it again. I want you to think about it. I want you to put your thinking caps on.

This is not talking about self -defense. Did you see the word self -defense in the text? I didn't see it there. It wasn't talking about self -defense or the defense of the weak or the defense of the vulnerable.

The text is talking about responding to a wrong that has been done to you. The wrong's been done. What do you do now?

And don't lose sight of the fact that Paul is writing to the church.

He's writing to us. The church is not to have a vigilante militia.

The people of the church are to seek to do good to one another. They are not to get into the increasing cycles of revenge and retaliation that's so common in our world.

Instead, we are straight up called to always seek to do good to one another and to everyone.

This is a calling that everyone in the room can understand, but again, is very counter -cultural. When John Eldredge in his best -selling book,

Wild at Heart, tells us his advice to his son to punch the bully in the face, I think to many of us, our hearts cried, yes!

But that was because America was not a reflection of the values of King Jesus, who turned the other cheek and told his followers to do likewise.

The church is called in community to always seek to do good to everyone.

So let's wrap up, and again, you may have questions about that last one. You might, I'd entertain any discussions that you might have.

Again, I just don't feel like I can exhaustively cover things in a sermon, but I would love to entertain any conversations anybody has about that last one.

But let's wrap up by considering some practical thoughts from this text before we come to communion.

And if you have any issues with leadership, come to see us so that we can work through things first.

So if you have issues with the leadership, come and let us know, and we'll try to walk through that and work through that.

And we would love to, I mean, most importantly, I think it's very valuable to have a sit -down, face -to -face conversation.

And as awkward as that can be, sometimes it forces you to think, is this a worthwhile discussion? Is this worth the time or the effort if it requires me to go sit and meet and vocalize that?

And so I would recognize that anybody that I would sit down and have that kind of conversation with that they've thought it through and they've worked it through and that they have issues, and we can talk through that and work through it there.

And that's happened here at the church and we've worked through things. But if you find it hard to respect or esteem leadership, don't spread that, but go to the source.

I think that's one of the best ways that you can esteem and respect the leadership is to not get back channels going.

And even if you have something, if you have something wrong with the leader, if you have something that I've said that's frustrated you up here or something that I've said that you think is wrong,

I'm not infallible up here, I'm trying my best to authoritatively speak the word of God from the authority of the text, but I can get things wrong.

If you see that or you're concerned about that, come and talk with me first and I'm open to correction,

I'm open to being wrong. But let's work through that together and make that a priority of going to the source.

And even if you've got a frustration with somebody else in the church, go to them. That's the model and I think that's the healthiest way to work through things in a church is don't go to somebody else and say,

I'm frustrated with so -and -so, are you too? That's divisiveness, that's quarreling, that's causing a division, whether intentionally or not.

So first, if you have an issue with leadership, come and talk to us. If you find it hard to respect or esteem leadership, go to the one that you're struggling to respect.

If you believe, third, that God could be calling you to a leadership role, I would encourage you to count the cost of labor, count the cost of accountability to the

Lord, count the cost of an unpopular role of admonishing others. And if you still sense the

Spirit is prompting you, then I would encourage you to come and see me and we can talk through steps that explore the possibility of leadership.

Fourth, if you've been sitting on the sidelines of community, it's time to jump in.

Over the summer, you can start by getting together with neighbors or inviting some people over after church for a barbecue or whatever.

You can come up with whatever creative ways, maybe you're into board games, you can invite people over to play games in the evening, whatever.

But in the fall, we're gonna be starting up a new round of community groups. And you should sign up for one.

Gonna be offered at different times, different hosts, different people, leading different topics and different subjects.

And I just encourage you to consider if maybe this fall would be the time for you to really take seriously this call, even from this text, to engage and grow in community.

By the way, it's very hard to obey your calling to admonish others, to encourage others, to help others and be patient with people if you're not connecting with people.

Kind of impossible to obey this text without involvement in people's lives.

Fifth, if you have a grudge, maybe somebody in this room has a grudge and you've been holding on to pain. Maybe you've even developed a plan of revenge in your mind or maybe it's just an imagined revenge, but that kind of makes you feel better when you can imagine that happening, something, a way to get back at someone.

Let me encourage you to extend forgiveness and good to the one who has wronged you.

And I recognize that there's all kinds of levels of wrong and some have been deeply and maybe even routinely wronged by someone that is close to you.

Please feel free to come and talk to me or set up a time to sit down and talk through the basics of healthy forgiveness. A lot of us misunderstand forgiveness.

We think it's just straight up, just some blanket, like I forgive you and you haven't even asked for it and there's no restoration or intention of restoration of relationship, but it's just a word that we use.

And there's a myth out there and I've mentioned this before in previous sermons, the myth that forgiveness is for you. Forgiveness is for you, right?

Like the only person you're hurting is yourself when you don't forgive, so just forgive them. Something more fundamental to that.

I kind of think that when Jesus forgave us, it was about a reconciliation of a relationship.

We suddenly forget God and Jesus when we talk about human forgiveness. I don't know why. Something about the way that that forgiveness restored us in relationship has something to do with the way that we forgive each other here.

I'd like to pursue that with you and talk through that and I've even got some resources. I hate to say it, but I've often got a, I got a book for that, right?

I'm that kind of, I'm that guy. So I've always got a book for that. If you have an issue, and of course, the answer is definitely not always books, but if you're interested in thinking more about forgiveness,

I've got some good resources on that. By the way, it doesn't mean that the person that you forgive is gonna go without punishment.

It just simply means you are not the one appointed to carry out that punishment. Do you hear me?

That's what forgiveness at its bedrock means is that you recognize that you are not the avenger.

You recognize that vengeance is on the Lord and justice is in His hands, not yours. So lastly, let's come to communion to remember the new life we've been granted in Christ.

His body was broken on the cross to grant us forgiveness and new life. His blood was shed so that we could be made new in Him.

This lifestyle of community is not even really truly possible without a true, in any true and meaningful way, it's not possible without the regeneration of our hearts, without a new heart in us.

Without the love and salvation God has provided through Jesus, we will always be stuck in a mode of self -service.

And that turns super ugly in the context of church. Each one of us begins to demand our own way.

So as we come to communion this morning, take a moment to thank God for giving all of us a fresh start, and you particularly a fresh start.

And if you have indeed received that fresh start by trusting Jesus to remove your sins, then come to one of the four tables and take communion with your community today.

We do this each week together as a reminder that we are not alone in our neediness. My hope and prayer is that we as a church will continue to grow in community.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your grace and your mercy that you have shined down on us.

I pray that you would be with us as we take communion, as we remember the death of Jesus Christ for us, his body broken for us, his blood shed for us.

And Father, I just am delighted that we have an opportunity to dig into your word this morning, to be admonished even myself from your word to come in contact with what you desire of your church.

And Father, I pray that you would help us to walk in strength in these things as a community, grow us tighter together in relationships with one another in Jesus' name, amen.